Village managers wear so many hats in their busy and complex roles and one of those hats you’ll be aware of is managing the ‘reactive’ and ‘proactive’ asset management strategies of your villages.
An important part of these strategies is determining the effective lifecycleof various assets from the sink tap to bigger items like the renewal of bowling greens or swimming pool pumps.
This data will feed into village operating budgets and capital expenditure budgets.
At the recent Village Manager Professional Development Workshop days, Village Managers said they spend anything from 30-50% of their day attending to property and asset management activities.
Many Village Managers won’t have building or quantity surveyor qualifications but that doesn’t mean they can’t be ‘proactive’ and have an extensive list of ‘trusted’ professionals they can turn to.
There are also a couple of tools that can help speed up the process of determining effective lifecycles for village assets.
For Village Managers in QLD, the legislative requirement for the completion of an independent review and report by a Quantity Surveyor every five years removes much of the risk of inaccuracy and provides confidence in the decision making around the management of assets.
If this approach isn’t something that’s possible immediately there are options that Village Managers could begin to adopt:
- Ensure ALL product manuals are easily accessible and referred to regularly.
- Seek professional help from a trusted cost manager/builder/Quantity Surveyor.
- Refer to the taxation offices effective life asset list in TR 2019/5 Table A
- Consider asset management software programs from the simple to operate to detailed ones like TechOne.
- Seek advice from an experienced colleague
Jodie
